Archives for May 2014

My wife and I have had problems recently with business people not turning up when they said they would. First it was the pond guy, who said he would come on the Saturday morning, but didn’t. Then it was going to be the following Saturday, and it was only on the third Saturday that he appeared.

He had been responsible for putting in the pond and when we have problems we expect support. The trouble for him is that if we get another pond person in to help, she or he will ask why we have not stayed with our first pond guy. If we are truthful, word will get out and a reputation will be damaged, even if it is what one might call self-harm.

We have had the same issue with a “tree surgeon” who failed to turn up to inspect the damage he caused on his first visit. He was obviously a “cowboy” as we can now see, and it is a pity his bad reputation did not go before him. It will certainly go after him.

Of course doing a bad job is going to affect anyone’s reputation. People who do a good job when they do turn up still damage their reputations badly if they fail to make meetings or assignments.

Going the extra mile will always help the standing of any business person. Turning up at the right time is the essential first step towards perfect service.

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I checked my drawer the other day to see how many business cards I had left from the last print. To my surprise it was a lot more than I had thought.

This leaves me with a dilemma. In one sense, I need my cards updated. My business has evolved, and although the call to action on the reverse side is still relevant, it does not precisely chime with my favourite niche.

On the other hand, I am not handing out many cards these days. Once upon a time when I started with breakfast networking groups, we handed out loads of cards, gave other members a supply to give to their contacts, and generally hoped they would bring referrals. Now, I mostly give cards to people who actually ask me at networking meetings and elsewhere. I think that is because everyone is now aware they can find everyone else on-line, or at least they should be able to do so.

A deterrent to handing out many cards is the likelihood we will get on people’s email mailing lists. I guess we know if we go to a trade exhibition and get asked for our card that is because we will be put on the trader’s email marketing list. I do not feel guilty about unsubscribing from those, but when someone I meet while networking adds me to their email list, I feel worse about unsubscribing even though I did not give them permission to add me in the first place.

The reality is that there is much less call on my supply of business cards. I am more reluctant to hand them out and do not feel I am expected to. My contact information, my skills and my businesses’ niche services are on-line for everyone to see. Do we really need to order 1500 cards at a time as I did several years ago? In five years’ time, will I need any at all when there will be some app for each of us to pass our details and spread the word?

This morning I went out for a walk in the woods, as I often do. It has been a lovely day today. The birds were singing and the woods are lush and green. There were plenty of squirrels, babies and adults, going about their business. There were thrushes and spectacularly smart, colourful jays.

A woman came walking the other way, with her dog. She was oblivious to her surroundings. She had her earphones plugged in, listening to her music. She stared straight ahead. She did not look at her dog. She did not look at me. She did not see the wood or the trees or the wildlife, and certainly she did not hear it.

We do not have a dog now, but I was brought up in a house in which we always had dogs. The reason to have a dog is for the companionship and for the pleasure of taking it out for a walk. I know this.

Yet to this person, walking her dog was clearly boring; a chore. She took no pleasure in exercising the animal which probably thinks much more of her than she of it. What is the point of her having a dog?

I wonder about people who see running their businesses as a chore. If they are getting no pleasure from it, what is the point of allowing it to occupy their lives?

You might say that the point is that they need the money. My point is that if running the business is such a chore, they cannot be doing it right.

Are they working all hours? They need to cut down.

Could they be more efficient in delivery, thereby cutting the hours worked, cutting the cost of delivery and increasing their profits that way? They have to consider whether they are not charging enough for their product or service, or maybe it is the wrong product or service.

Perhaps they should change what they provide. Perhaps they should change everything because it is no good living a life of drudgery. It is no good seeing work as just a chore.

I guess we all have memories of matters we could have handed differently. Should I have gone to that college? Should I have tried harder with that girlfriend and might I have married her? Should I have chosen that career? Should I have taken that job?

The truth is that we will never know the answers to those questions, so there is no point in having regrets. We had an education, we may well be in a happy relationship now, we have made the best of our career and have probably been successful. What is there to regret? We must have learned lessons along the way.

Each time we chose a path, we did not know where it would lead, or where we would have ended up if we had gone the other way.

I have made many mistakes in business. I have wasted money on advertising. I was once scammed out of some money by a bogus “magazine publisher”. I did not accept offers of help when I should. I misjudged a client who never paid me all he owed, and it was quite a lot too.

We have to take our mistakes on the chin. As long as we learned a lesson each time, we have gained in experience and will know better next time.

It is no good beating ourselves up. Lessons learned are profitable and lead to more profits for our business by avoiding mistakes in future.

You don’t have any regrets, do you?

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I started writing On Our Bikes to help others who, like me, found themselves with no work and had to go out and find it as an independent business person. I had no experience of running my own business and had not expected to have to do so.

It was for me a really tough position to be in, especially when like many, I expected that someone was bound to want my services. Of course I did not understand that clients have to be convinced that they need us, and understand our value to them.

Someone I have known for quite a few years through social media and face-to-face networking is Rory Murray. He has written a great Kindle book, The Saw-Tooth Dilemma (this is not an affiliate link) on getting work as a consultant and how to avoid the “feast-and-famine” scenario so unfortunately familiar to independent service providers and consultants.

Here is my review of his book on Amazon:

“Rory has written a roller-coaster account of his feast and famine experiences in work opportunities, and most importantly he tells us how to avoid them. This is a very personal account which would help anyone who is unemployed, who is a contractor or a consultant without a guaranteed stream of work. You will learn how to apply your social skills to gain work and how to use the on-line networking sites to best effect.